Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be called for jury duty again.
When I lived in California, it seemed like I was called every other year.
The last time I served, over Christmas 2008 and New Years 2009, was the most significant of all my appearances, I had been a juror convicting a man of driving while intoxicated back in 1991, but my appearance 17 years later was a much bigger deal. Here’s what I wrote about it at the time:
“I recently completed jury service that wound up lasting for at least part of five different weeks; I was a sworn juror in a murder trial that involved one dead body, two defendants, two different Los Angeles gangs and a drive-by shooting. Nobody got convicted, even though I could give you good odds that both men were guilty.
“All that happened was that I got to see a lot of the frustrations police and prosecutors must have serving as the thin line between us and total anarchy. There are a lot of crimes — murders even — that are never charged and never come to trial. Without circumstancial evidence or eyewitnesses, there’s simply no way to convict a defendant.
“In our trial, two members of one gang — the shooter and the driver — were on trial for killing one member of a rival gang and wounding two others. One of the two who had been wounded was an eyewitness to the shooting, which took the life of his closest friend. He had identified the two men in a police interrogation and in the preliminary hearing in February. But by the time of our trial, he was starting to feel the pressure to stop being a “snitch.” He recanted his testimony, saying that he had lied earlier.
“This was serious business. Snitches get killed and so do their families, so our witness actually had shown a great deal of courage earlier and just couldn’t sustain it.
“We were asked to believe he had told the truth earlier and was lying now, and there were too many people of the jury who just couldn’t make that leap of faith. It didn’t help that the young man who basically appointed himself our jury foreman was as close to a bleeding heart as you see these days.
“We acquitted the driver and hung 11-1 for acquittal on the alleged shooter. Our foreman was practically weeping. He told us he was “heartbroken” that we couldn’t agree on an acquittal for the other young man, and that he might have to spend more time in jail if the district attorney chose to try the case again.
“I felt like suggesting he get a testosterone shot, but I didn’t.
“When several of us — not including our foreboy — talked with the DA after the verdicts were announced, she disabused us of any notion that these were good guys wrongly accused. Both of them were already serving time on other violations, and the driver had actually done time for a murder he had committed as a juvenile.
“I asked her why she had brought the case, given such a small hope of victory. “It’s my job,” she said. “I feel like I owe it to the people in the community who will come forward to try the case.”
“I wasn’t the holdout. I didn’t see any point in it, but in retrospect I wish I had held out on both men. Not that it would have made any difference, but if folks are going to make the Sisyphean attempt to push the boulder up the hill, the more help they get the better.”
***
Horrible thoughts heading into the shopping season:
“What good is a book? Not much in the hands of people who do not think, and to be honest, most Americans do not even know how to think. Just consume.”
— JOE BAGEANT
If you’ve been following this blog and its earlier incarnations, you know how much I admire the late Joe Bageant, the author of the amazing book “Deer Hunting With Jesus.” Along with Thomas Frank and Barbara Ehrenreich, Bageant writes eloquently about what has happened to the working class in this country over the last 30 years.
Bageant’s subtitle alone says a lot — “Dispatches from America’s Class War.” He basically points out that the working class would vote Democratic — in its economic interest — except that Democrats not only don’t understand them, they insult them.
Republicans might be stealing them blind, but they’re doing it while they’re complimenting them and telling them what fine Americans they are.
When I read Bageant and the others, I become extremely discouraged at the possibility of political solutions. I think our society has slid so far into a crass, soulless materialism that people are desperate for any chance to feel good about themselves.
“Just consume.”
Other than committing actual crimes, do you know what the worst thing Americans could do as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century?
You guessed it. Stop consuming. Our economy is so dependent on a certain percentage of us eating fast food every night, a certain percentage buying x number of DVDs and a certain number replacing television sets, refrigerators and cell phones every year, among other things.
This is our duty as Americans. If we don’t spend money, other people lose their jobs.
Bageant calls our society the “American hologram,” writing that the picture of our society that most of us accept is anything but what we really inhabit. In the hologram, folks are smiling, playing ball and enjoying their lives. In reality, 70 percent of American families are either just getting by or not getting by financially.
So what do we do about it?
I’m sorry, but I don’t think there are political solutions to this problem. I certainly believe it’s better for working people when Democrats hold power, but I think the Democratic Party of 2009 is basically Republican Lite on economic issues.
I think one step is that just one person at a time, we can start behaving ethically toward the people around us. We can refuse to cheat or con them, refuse to take advantage of them and not encourage them to buy things they don’t need.
Aside from that, my solution would be as much as possible, do this:
Refuse to participate in the consumer society.
Don’t buy a new computer if your old one still works. Don’t buy a new car until your old one falls apart. Save your money, in credit unions instead of banks as much as possible.
And look for a way to define yourself other than as an American consumer.
I’ll finish with a paraphrase from a Garth Brooks song that I think says it pretty well.
Don’t do this so that you can change the world. Do it so the world won’t change you.
***
Are we ever going to overcome the horrible infection known as Donald Trump.?
I know there will be people who say I shouldn’t blame The Former Guy for yet another shooting, but he’s the only president in my lifetime who suggested the use of “Second Amendment Remedies” for his followers if they didn’t get what they wanted.
So there was another campus shooting, this time in Charlottesville at the University of Virginia. We don’t know why it happened, or if Trump had anything to do with the motivation, but I guarantee you Trump has cheapened our society. Shootings have become far more common since he became president in 2017.
I don’t want anyone to shoot him, but I sure would be glad to see Satan call him home to hell.